Ratings Key

★★★★ = Excellent. The best the genre has to offer.★★★1/2 = Very Good. Perhaps not "perfect," but undoubtedly a must-see.★★★ = Good. Accomplishes what it sets out to do and does it well.★★1/2 = Fair. Clearly flawed and nothing spectacular, but competently made. OK entertainment.★★ = Mediocre. Either highly uneven or by-the-numbers and uninspired.★1/2 = Bad. Very little to recommend.★ = Very Bad. An absolute chore to sit through.NO STARS! = Abysmal. Unwatchable dreck that isn't even bad-movie amusing.SBIG = So Bad It's Good. Technically awful movies with massive entertainment value.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Vahset kasirgasi (1985)

... aka: Brutal Storm

Directed by:
Kadir Akgün

In Turkey during the 70s and 80s, their crazy ass film industry cranked out dozens of cheapies which directly copied films from other countries. And by directly, I mean often line-for-line and scene-for-scene. In essence, these films were actually remakes. Apparently, it was assumed that these films would never, ever leave the country (and apparently the original versions would never enter!) so they had no fear of being sued for copyright infringement or plagiarism. Copies of these inferior clones eventually started to leak out; some were actually released to VHS in countries such as Greece and Germany, then they began showing up as black market tapes and then bootleg DVDs in the U.S. and now some have popped up on the internet. Some were copies of hit blockbusters, such as The Exorcist (or as they called it, SEYTAN), Jaws, Young Frankenstein, E.T., Star Wars and Rambo, but some of their choices for films to remake were downright bizarre. I've already seen and reviewed THIRSTY FOR LOVE, SEX AND MURDER (1972), which was a carbon copy of the not-especially-well known Italian giallo THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (1971). And now I've seen Brutal Storm, which copycats the barely-known Spanish chiller IT HAPPENED AT NIGHTMARE INN (1973), of all things.

Nightmare Inn (which is actually a pretty good film) starred Aurora Bautista and Esperanza Roy as, respectively, sanctimonious, bitter, hypocritical and controlling Marta and the weak and passive Veronica; a pair of murderous, middle-aged, ultra-religious sisters who own and operate an inn located in a popular tourist area and butcher women they view as being of loose moral character. This film features sanctimonious, bitter, hypocritical and controlling Naide (Nur Incegül) and weak and passive Cahide (Leyla Akin), who (surprise) own and operate an inn located in a popular tourist area and (even more surprisingly) butcher women they view as being of loose moral character. But hey, according to the opening narration; There are only two kinds of people in this world; the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous. The sisters are first scene hacking up a side of beef with cleavers while bitching about the "naked tourists invading our town" and how they'll all burn in hell. One of their female boarders, Hale, is caught sunbathing topless on the roof. During a scuffle, Naide screams "You sinful bitch!" and pushes her down the stairs, where she's impaled on a bronze statue. Instead of going to the police, the ladies decide to hack up the corpse and throw the pieces into an oven.

Nightmare Inn also featured blonde British actress Judy Geeson as Laura; a woman who shows up at the inn looking for answers when her sister disappears. This one features a blonde girl named Nalan, who shows up there looking for answers after her friend goes missing. Nalan is told that her friend has already checked out but is skeptical of that, rents a room and starts snooping around. Another free-spirited, obnoxious (and loud) girl named Dilek gets under the sisters' skin by constantly laughing, being drunk, making fake lesbian advances at Naide, running around in her bikini and dancing for men on the beach. Naide stabs her to death. Songül (Songül Gündüz), a single woman with an infant daughter, comes along next and Naide doesn't seem to appreciate the fact that the baby may have been born out of wedlock. Eventually realizing that three unexplained disappears probably means that something is seriously wrong, Nalan (who'd already been kicked out for asking too many questions) decides to check back in with her male friend Kaya (posing as her fiancée) to investigate some more.

The film seldom strays from the original source material. It's also technically inept. I'm not entirely sure (because the quality of the version I saw was in such poor shape), but this appears to have been shot on video. It's full of zoom shots, lingering shots of people at the beach, poor editing cuts, poor lighting, horribly inappropriate music cues and filler scenes that seem to last an eternity. There are several scenes of the characters walking down the street that go on for minutes and another of Naide walking through a field feeling herself up (after watching a couple have sex) that never seems to end. Aside from the husky-voiced Incegül (who also appeared in Bloody Mansion of Death for the same director) as the nastier of the two sisters, the acting is pretty bad. There are two topless scenes (one from the sunbather and another a shower scene) and a couple of bloody moments (including a decapitation).

One of the most memorable aspects of this film is the music score. The movie not only lifts its plot, dialogue and characters from another film, it also steals music from at least a dozen other films! Music from the first three Halloween movies makes up the bulk of it, but you can also hear snippets from other films, such as Deep Red, Cannibal Holocaust, Friday the 13th Part 3 (yes, the opening disco theme lives again!) and others. Nalan even attends a dance party at one point, where they play the Ghostbusters theme song! I didn't recognize all of the music, though. Some of it sounds lifted from an action movie (or movies) and doesn't fit the material at all. The film would get a lower rating if it wasn't all so funny.

PATREON SUPPORT

Updates have unfortunately been few and far between recently but there's a good reason. If you'd like to contribute to keeping this place going and updated more regularly please HEAD RIGHT HERE to offer your support. I have a full explanation on there. Thank you!

Hidden Horror

I contributed an essay on George A. Romero's 'Season of the Witch' (1972) to this wonderful book celebrating overlooked or underrated horror films. Forward by William "Maniac" Lustig and endorsed by Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund. Click on the photo to be redirected to Amazon where you can learn more or purchase a copy.

THE ORLOKS - 2015

(Results from the IMDb user polls. More will be added weekly throughout the year.)